Shared/by Walter Sánchez Silva
ACI Press
Msgr. Daniel E. Flores, Bishop of Brownsville, begged the authorities of Texas (United States) not to execute Melissa Lucio, a 53-year-old woman who was sentenced to death for the death, in 2007, of Mariah Álvarez, her two-year-old daughter.
“15 years ago, the Rio Grande Valley was shocked to hear of the death, in Brownsville, of Mariah, a two-year-old girl. Today Melissa Lucio, mother of the little girl, and now grandmother, is sentenced to death, waiting to be executed for the death of her daughter,” explained the Prelate in a recent statement.
“There are many circumstances that raise questions about Melissa Lucio’s conviction for first-degree murder. The information on the case and the mitigating circumstances around it are available to those who want to know more about it,” said the Bishop.
Regarding the future execution, the Bishop stressed that “death is not the answer to death. You don’t make a tragedy better by killing someone else. Justice is not restored because another person dies.”
“Executing Melissa will not give her children peace, it will only cause more pain and suffering.
I plead with the state of Texas to commute Melissa’s death sentence. Let’s not rule out her life.”
“I ask everyone to work and pray to end the death penalty in Texas and in the country,” he concluded.
Melissa Elizabeth Lucio is the first woman of Hispanic descent in Texas to be sentenced to death since the state reinstated capital punishment in 1976.
Lucio had 14 children, and nine of them lived with her and her boyfriend, Robert Álvarez. On February 17, 2007, paramedics were called to her home because the youngest girl, two-year-old Mariah Álvarez, was unresponsive, not breathing, and had a broken arm.
The girl was pronounced dead at a local hospital, where the emergency room doctor said that in 30 years of practice she had not seen a case of child abuse worse than Mariah’s, after which Lucio was arrested.
It was later determined that Mariah’s arm had been broken two to seven weeks prior to her death and she had not been treated for this condition.
Melissa Lucio was convicted and sentenced to death on Aug. 12, 2008. She is currently in the Mountain View Unit which has a “death row” for women in Texas.
In 2011 an appeal was rejected. In 2019, a three-judge panel of the Federal Court of Appeals overturned the sentence due to the trial court’s interference in Lucio’s right to present a defense.
This decision was later overturned and Lucio remained on death row.
In August 2021, a group made up of jurists, experts on violence against women and representatives of 16 organizations that fight against violence against women presented a brief in favor of Lucio.
However, in January 2022, Cameron County officials signed an execution order for Lucio, which is scheduled for April 27.
Melissa’s lawyer defends that the woman is innocent and that “her daughter died from an accidental fall and not from a criminal hand.”
Sonia, Melissa Lucio’s sister, said that “as long as we can, we will continue fighting for Melissa because she is innocent.”
According to Telemundo40, the sister asks “that they write to the Governor and they can also call him. Let them watch the film and give Melissa mercy and let her off the hook. She already suffered a lot.”
The film she is referring to is the 2020 documentary “The State of Texas vs Melissa.”
